D51.2 Final guidelines for sustainability assessment of water technologies

Nine micropollutant substances have been identified as high priority substances to be reported in all case studies based on their environmental relevance, coverage of chemical and physical properties, elimination rates by various technologies and existence of an analytical method to identify them. Characterization factors for the toxicity model USEtox® have been developed for all these substances based on the EPISuite v4.1 software for physico-chemical properties, data from project partners (EAWAG) for aquatic toxicity properties and a literature review for human toxic properties. The developed characterization factors have been submitted for a potential review and validation by the USEtox® team as a first attempt to perform an external review on newly developed characterization factors. For water footprinting in selected case studies with direct water consumption during treatment (= evaporation from MAR systems at Dunea and Sant Vicenc dels Horts), water scarcity footprints have been calculated based on the Water Database of Quantis to reveal the direct and indirect water consumption of these treatment technologies. For calculation of scarcity footprints, local and regional water scarcity factors have been used to weight the different water consumptions (e.g. local water evaporation in MAR pond, regional water consumption in electricity production) and identify major direct and indirect contributions of water consumption in water-scarce areas.